LEXINGTON – Tennessee Education Commissioner Candice McQueen may have just taken office, but she is already having an impact across the state. Sworn in to office on Jan. 17, McQueen has begun a statewide tour of classroom visits where she plans to connect with 10,000 Tennessee teachers. The commissioner said she is committed to this goal as a way to listen and learn from the state's educators.

"I believe it is critical to listen to Tennessee teachers and engage them in policy discussions because they will be living it out in their classrooms. They need to be a significant voice in this discussion," McQueen said. "We have to partner together to continue the momentum of historic gains in Tennessee."

Stopping by Henderson County on Friday as part of this initiative, McQueen visited Westover Elementary School and Lexington High School before heading up a roundtable discussion. Over 30 teachers and administrators from the district attended to discuss their concerns about the education system.

One major theme that was raised centered on the amount of testing schools are now required to do in order to meet state standards.

"I feel like we have way too many tests in the K through 8 (grade) level," said Marty Johnson, principal of South Side Elementary, as many teachers around the room nodded in agreement.

"We start the year giving a STAR test, and if you're 35th percentile and below, you retest, and if you're in the 25th percentile and below, you go into the intervention program, and we also do benchmark tests in October. It would be nice if the state was giving one test that would cover all of these things for us instead of us having to do all these tests and go out and buy AIMSweb, go out and buy STAR. If the state had a test we could give at the beginning that was the only test we had to give, then we could focus on instruction and intervention instead of testing."

McQueen understood the sentiment, asking for patience while more feedback was collected and explaining that new tests would be on the way within two years' time.

It was an informative and refreshingly personal meeting that found Johnson optimistic about the future. An educator for 24 years, Johnson said this was the first time in his career that he has seen a commissioner take the time to meet face to face with teachers and have a discussion.

"I think she's got a tough job and she's got a lot of things to fix that the previous commissioner kind of wrecked communication-wise," he said. "I don't know that he had bad ideas, but he presented them in bad ways, and she's got an image problem to fix first of all, and I think she's going to do a great job of that."

State Sen. Dolores Gresham, R-Somerville, who was also on hand to participate in the discussion, took the opportunity to add a word of encouragement to all the teachers present. Gresham recounted a dinner held at the governor's mansion in which Gov. Bill Haslam shared what he considered to be his best day as the governor of Tennessee.

"The governor asked us all to share the best day we've ever had as members of the General Assembly," Gresham told the educators. "Then when everyone had shared and it was his turn, the governor said, 'The best day that I have ever had in this job is the day that those NAEP scores came in, and it indicated that Tennessee was the fastest improving state in academics in the country.' That was the best day he said he had ever had. That never could have happened without you, so let me just tell you that you are valued."